Onwards
by northernexposure
Summary: Set post-Endgame, ignoring the books. This was originally supposed to be a one-shot, although it ties into my other 'Ayala' stories (Down Time/Observations/Last Words) and has now grown a little. Mostly fluff. Er… that's about it.
1. Chapter 1

**Onwards**

**A/N: **Set post _Endgame_, and I have chosen to ignore the books.

Thank you to the very lovely MissyHissy3 for beta reading for me. Any mistakes are mine. Thank you for reading, and reviews are very much appreciated.

* * *

The sky over San Francisco was as blue as he had ever seen it, an unclouded sun beating down out of the hot July day. It was Sunday, which meant there were no classes to teach. The preparation for the following week he'd already completed the previous day, which meant today was truly his and his alone. That was a habit he'd developed on _Voyager_ – carving out a piece of the week, however small, in which he had nothing to do but what he himself chose. It was a survival tactic, one that he had attempted to encourage the rest of the crew to adopt. In a life as singularly dedicated as theirs had been forced to become, respite was as necessary a part of morale as any party thrown by Neelix or any holodeck distraction developed by Tom Paris. By the end of their journey, there was only one crewmember who had failed to take his advice.

But then, she had never been obligated to take anything from him at all.

For all his efforts to keep this day free, today Chakotay had obligations of his own. Pleasant ones, but obligations nonetheless, which meant there were certain things he had to make sure he did. He rose early, as usual, and enjoyed a run along the beach that was a mere two blocks from the achingly modern apartment complex he had made his home. When he'd finally decided what to do with himself following their return, the choices he had made had raised a few eyebrows. To be honest, Chakotay still wasn't sure this was where he would stay. But the opportunity offered him at Starfleet Academy was too good to pass up just because right now he wasn't quite sure that this was what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. All Chakotay really knew at this point was that he wanted to stand still for a while. He wanted a chance for life to pass by him as he watched, rather than the other way around. Besides that, he wanted to breathe: to really breathe, to inhale air that hadn't been through a thousand cycles of mechanical cleansing before he took it back into his lungs.

So this apartment, this teaching position at Starfleet Academy – it was fine. Not perfect, perhaps, but then what was?

His former crewmates had chosen various different paths. Some had left Starfleet altogether. Others, like him, had taken a less demanding role that meant they could spend more time with the families they had been without for seven years. Still others had thrown themselves back into the saddle immediately, as if they were afraid to stand still. As if doing so, in fact, might force them to confront aspects of their lives that they were not yet ready to deal with.

And others? One other, in particular, of course. Chakotay had not seen or spoken to Kathryn Janeway in months. He'd heard through the grapevine that she was heading up an expedition of scientific ships that were due to take a long sojourn into deep space. He hoped that she would find whatever it was she was still searching for, but he doubted it. Chakotay had become aware, years ago, that whatever it was that Janeway was looking for was as unreachable as smoke and just as intangible. In truth, he had come to suspect that for Kathryn Janeway, fulfilment was necessarily unattainable. What she had achieved, what she had seen, where she had been – none of this seemed to be enough to quench her need to keep moving. Perhaps it was atonement, he mused. Perhaps there was something for which she simply could not forgive herself, and all her searching, all her restless self-sacrifice even in the wake of _Voyager_'s successful and safe return, was simply the long shadow of an unhealed, self-inflicted wound.

These thoughts rattled around Chakotay's head as he showered and changed after his run, as circular as they had ever been. He locked them in the stillness of the apartment behind him as he left it, unwilling to let them take up more of this precious free day than they already had. He'd let that happen before, too many times to count, and it did him no good.

Her face faded from his mind as he stepped out onto the Sunday quiet of the street. He checked his watch – plenty of time to do all he needed to. Enough time, in fact, to walk to the supermarket, rather than taking the hovercar. Paris would laugh at him – did laugh at him frequently, in fact - for owning a vehicle he so rarely saw fit to use. But even a year on, being able to walk somewhere that didn't lead directly to a turbolift was still enough of a novelty that Chakotay chose it time and again.

His communicator chirruped in his pocket as he walked.

"_Chakotay?"_

He smiled. "Maria. Morning."

"_And good morning to you. Just checking that you haven't forgotten…"_

"Of course not."

"… _and that you're not going to be late."_

"I won't be late. When am I ever late?"

"_Well, just make sure that today isn't the day you break the habit of a lifetime. All right?"_

A small niggle of suspicion began to form in the back of Chakotay's mind. "Why?" he asked. "What's so special about today?"

"_What – making my boys happy isn't enough for you after their father abandoned them for seven years to follow you half way across the universe?"_

Chakotay shook his head with a smile. "You're never not going to use that to get what you want out of me, are you?"

He could hear the answering smile in her voice as she laughed, _"What do you think? But you owe me for something else this time."_

"Oh? What?"

"_You'll see. Just don't be late."_

"I won't be."

"_Good. Oh, and Chakotay?"_

"Yes."

"_Make an effort today, OK? Wear those pants. You know, the dark ones. You look good in those."_

He groaned. "Maria…"

"_Don't 'Maria' me,"_ she scolded gently. _"There will just be a few extra people coming today, that's all. Nothing to worry about."_

He sighed. "Who-"

"_Later, Chakotay. Later!"_ And with that, she was gone.

He put the communicator back in his pocket with a frown. Suddenly, a lazy afternoon barbecue at the Ayalas' place seemed significantly less inviting. At some point in the past year, Maria Ayala seemed to have decided that Chakotay's single state was a problem, and moreover, it was a problem that had fallen to her to solve. She'd push women in front of him at every opportunity, despite the fact that he'd told her he was perfectly capable of finding companionship himself should he need it.

"Then why don't we ever see you with these fabled women?" was her reply. "I tell you, Chakotay, there are two answers to that question: Either there aren't any and you are lying to me, or they're not the sort you keep around long enough to introduce to your family. And whichever one of those is the answer, it's not right. Look at you. You're almost 50. You can't play around forever. You always wanted a family, you always wanted children. So get to it, before you're too old to play with your own kids the way you played with ours when they were little."

Maria Ayala was not one to sugar-coat her pronouncements. He didn't have the heart to tell her that he'd long ago given up on the idea of a family of his own. His relationship with Seven had been the final nail in that coffin – he'd known very early on that the Borg interference with her systems made it likely she'd never be able to conceive. It was a consideration, of course it was – he hadn't begun to date her lightly - and given his age, those kinds of big questions had to be asked and answered early. But he'd wanted to make it work, he really had, and in the end it hadn't been overly hard to let go of that particular dream. Despite the joy that Naomi brought to the crew's lives, Chakotay wasn't at all sure that he'd want to raise a child aboard _Voyager_ himself, however much he admired and supported B'Elanna and Tom's decision to have Miral.

It hadn't worked out with Seven. That wasn't a huge surprise, certainly not once they'd made it home, but the idea of then starting a serious relationship with someone new – someone who could never really understand what it had been like to spend seven years in a bubble so far from anything known – was frankly just too difficult to contemplate. So he'd resigned himself, really, to remaining single. Not that he actively pushed women away – he just didn't seek them out, or encourage them to stay. He couldn't see himself with another person, not permanently, not anymore. It was as simple as that. And he was fine on his own. He was fine.

He reached the supermarket doors and passed from the raw heat of the morning into the air-conditioned cool inside, snagging a basket as he mentally listed the produce he needed. If there were more people coming, he should take more with him. The three-tomato salad he always prepared, of course, but what else? Chargrilled zucchini, sliced as thin as paper and salted to draw out the water… Fresh green beans, blanched and tossed with parmesan, perhaps…

Chakotay's attention was briefly caught by a figure ahead of him. He glanced up and saw it disappearing between two aisles, out of sight before he'd even properly seen her. He frowned, momentarily distracted, though there was no reason to be. For a fraction of a second, he'd thought it was Janeway, though if he'd been asked to explain why, he'd have struggled to pinpoint a reason. Something about the way the woman moved, perhaps. A similar roll of the hip, maybe, or something reminiscent about her hair. Or, more likely, the fact that he'd been thinking of her earlier.

It wasn't her, of course. Even if he hadn't known she was currently at the outer reaches of the galaxy, this was a long way from her home turf.

_Chips and dips to fill out the table,_ he thought, washing the returned image of her face from his mind. Though the table would likely be laden as it was. Maria Ayala was not one to skimp on her hospitality, not matter how many extra mouths she'd invited this afternoon.

His basket full of empty calories, Chakotay made for the fresh produce. He'd revelled in this since their return – the simple joy of unrestricted, recognisable, fresh food. As he reached for some tomatoes, he saw the woman again. She was standing on the other side of the triangular display. She wasn't moving. She was just standing, apparently contemplating an array of oranges with rapt attention.

Kathryn Janeway.

Chakotay froze for a moment, his arm still outstretched as he tried to work it out. What on earth was she doing here? What was she doing on Earth at all? He watched her, but she didn't move, and she hadn't seen him. She seemed lost in thought, and he had a sudden image of her in uniform, seated behind the desk in her ready room, the same contemplative look on her face as they sat opposite each other doing their weekly reports. She'd have coffee, he'd have tea, and there they would sit for hours in companionable silence, working through PADD after PADD, finishing one and handing it to the other for review. It was a habit they'd fallen into after New Earth, when they had both discovered that they worked best in each other's quiet company. It had lasted up until the events surrounding their discovery of the _Equinox_, and he wondered whether she had missed it as much as he had in those last two years of their exile.

Another shopper appeared at his side, shaking Chakotay from his brief reverie. He moved aside and put down his basket. Kathryn was still standing in the same place, a strange look on her face, though her gaze roved along the display of fruit. He began to move closer, and felt something turn over in his gut. _What was that?_ Some emotion brought out by the surprise of seeing her, here, in this supermarket, of all places. There was something deeply incongruous about it. He'd seen her command the bridge of a starship with absolute skill. He'd seen her with her boots off and her feet up on the table in her ready room. He'd seen her in battle. He'd seen her in pain. He'd seen her laughing and he'd seen her in tears. He'd even seen her wrapped in nothing but a towel, and yet to him she'd always worn that uniform, as if it were impossible for her to escape the shadow of it, whether or not it was physically present.

Here she was, though, out of uniform in flat pumps, pale blue jeans and a white shirt, and although something in his deeper self had recognised her without even seeing her face, his brain had dismissed her as a stranger.

Chakotay stopped when there was no more than a foot between them, but she still hadn't registered his presence. He was concerned by her stillness. Her arms hung at her sides, hands curled into fists. Her weight was on one foot, leaning towards the produce, though the tension in her shoulders was holding her back.

"Kathryn?"

She spun to face him, wide eyed, taking one shocked breath and then another before that had even reached her lungs – a double inhalation that somehow made the thing that had been rolling in his gut since he saw her knot itself a little tighter.

"Chakotay."

She said it in the tone of a deeply shocked whisper, yet also as if she'd somehow expected him. Janeway blinked, her gaze roving over his face.

"Captain – what are you doing here?"

He regretted using her rank the moment it was out of his mouth. It had even less place here than she did. Janeway turned away, looking again at the piles of fruit before them.

"I… I was passing. I suddenly had the greatest craving for an orange. But then I got here and… and there's so much variety, Chakotay. I just…"

She trailed off. Her hands were at her sides again, clenched.

Despite the peculiarity of the situation, Chakotay smiled slightly. "Too much choice?"

"Yes! But not only that, I keep rediscovering things I had forgotten." She gestured. "Lychees, for example. I never, not in the seven years that we were out there, thought once about a lychee. So I never replicated one. And then I walked in here and there they are, and… And I love them. I love how sweet they are, how sticky. I love how ridiculous they are to eat because it takes forever to peel them and then the stone is so big it's hardly worth it. How did I forget that? How did I just… forget them so completely for _seven years_?" She was still turned away from him, but he could see open distress on her face.

_It's just a fruit_, he wanted to say, _it's nothing to worry about._ But he understood. He really did, enough to know that this – whatever it was - wasn't about a fruit. At least, it wasn't only about a fruit. He'd been there himself, in the first months following their return. An intense sense of dislocation – of culture shock, almost. The crew of _Voyager_ had returned to a place they should know well, and yet everything was just slightly different, both because the memory cheats and also because the world they thought would be waiting for them had subtly moved on. Most of them had dealt with it slowly. It occurred to him that perhaps some of them hadn't dealt with it at all.

"Neelix would love this, wouldn't he?" she said, with a shrug that encompassed everything before them.

Chakotay laughed. "Yes, he would."

Janeway smiled. "I miss him. Sometimes - say it quietly - I even miss his cooking. Now that we're home I can have anything I want, any time I want it – no rationing, no replicators-"

"No leola root," he reminded her.

She looked up at him again, a playful spark in her eyes that he hadn't seen for years. "True. But sometimes," she whispered conspiratorially, "I even miss the leola root."

"On the other hand," he said, matching her tone, "real coffee."

She smiled at that, really smiled, and the gesture wiped away so many years that just for a second, it was as if he was seeing it for the first time.

"Kathryn, what are you doing here? I thought you were heading up the Riker Initiative out of Deep Space Five. Didn't that leave a month ago?"

Janeway looked away and twined her fingers together. "My mother died three months ago."

He reached out reflexively, grasping her arm gently. "I'm so sorry to hear that."

She nodded, and tried for a weak smile as she sighed. "I wasn't even here. Can you believe that? I was on Deep Space Five, preparing for my next assignment. We were stuck out there in the Delta Quadrant for the best part of seven years, and yet when we finally make it back I still don't put my family first."

"I'm sure she understood," Chakotay said, though the words sounded like a platitude, even to his ears.

"Yes, she always understood," was Kathryn's strained response. "She understood when my father was away for such long periods. She understood when he died, she understood when I stranded a ship full of people in a distant galaxy, she understood when I thought it more important to go out again instead of having a different life closer to home, closer to her. She always understood, but it doesn't make it-" Janeway broke off, and shook her head. "Anyway. In the light of my bereavement – or rather, in the light of this bereavement on top of everything else that's happened in the past eight years, the Starfleet doctors decided that I needed to take an enforced break, and rescinded my medical clearance. So here I am… taking a break. I drove up the coast to Seattle and back."

"On your own?"

She shrugged.

"That's a long way to go alone."

She gave him a look. "I've been further."

He frowned. "I wish you'd called me."

"Why?"

"We were friends once, weren't we? Do you think I don't care? Do you think I wouldn't have been there for you?"

Kathryn looked away. "You have your own life, Chakotay. Finally, you have your own life, and from what I hear it's a good one. Do you think I would drag you away from that – again?"

"What makes you think you'd have had to drag me?"

"We haven't spoken in months, Chakotay. You haven't called me in months."

"You haven't called me, either. I didn't think you wanted to talk to me. You haven't called anyone – I know you haven't, or someone would have known about your mother, and Tom Paris would have been on comms immediately, demanding that I get in touch with you."

She glanced up at him, surprised and amused. "Would he?"

"Oh, yes."

She shook her head. "I didn't… I _couldn't _call you - any of you."

"Why not?"

"Because I took seven years of your life! I took seven years of all your lives. And now you all have them back, and I couldn't just…"

"You could have, and you should have. They all love you. _We_ all love you. Sooner or later, you're going to have to replace your guilt about what happened to _Voyager _with something else. Replace it with that."

She looked up at him silently for a moment, eyes sheened with tears that he knew she wouldn't let fall. "Why didn't you think I wanted to talk to you?"

"What?"

"You said, 'I didn't think you wanted to talk to me'. Why would you think that?"

He shrugged. "It was a strange seven years, and they didn't end easily between us."

Janeway nodded. "It was probably better to move on, leave it all behind."

"Yes." He'd thought the same. Or at least, Chakotay thought he had. Now he wondered whether it was just that he knew that's exactly what she'd be thinking.

"Did you?" She asked, quietly. "Did you leave me behind?"

He almost laughed as he realised a truth he'd never before acknowledged. "No. I tried, but no. Did you leave _me_ behind?"

Kathryn did laugh. "Of course I didn't. Why else would I take a detour just to drive through a neighbourhood I'd heard you lived in?"

There was a brief silence. The knot spinning in Chakotay's gut had begun to make it difficult to breathe.

"Sorry," she said, looking down at her hands. "Look – I need to get on. I really only stopped for-"

"An orange," he finished for her.

Janeway smiled, though it was a poor shadow of her best. "Yes. And maybe some lychees…"

"Does that mean you're busy for the rest of the day?"

She grew very still. "No. Not really. Why?"

"I'm going to see some friends this afternoon. The Ayalas, in fact. They're having a barbecue."

A strange look crossed her face. "Mike… his wife is Maria?"

"That's right. Why don't you come with me? I know Mike would love to see you, and Maria has always wanted to meet you. She used to ask me about you all the time."

Janeway was shaking her head before he'd even finished speaking. "Oh, I don't think so, Chakotay. I don't want to intrude."

"You wouldn't be. Maria called me a while ago and told me that she'd already invited a few other people."

"No, I really don't think…"

"Kathryn," he said, softly, simply to stop her.

They stood looking at each other for a moment, and Chakotay had realised that something had changed. Nothing he could pinpoint. Nothing she could either, he surmised. But today had become something other than it had been when each of them got up that morning.

"If you like," he said, "I can check that it's OK. But I can tell you now that it will be."

"Please," she said. "I just don't want to turn up unannounced."

"But you'll come?"

She smiled. "If it's not an imposition. Yes, I'll come."

Chakotay pulled the communicator from his pocket and thumbed in a contact. It beeped quietly as it waited for an answer.

"I still sometimes reach for my Starfleet one," Janeway said, nodding to the device in his hand. "Takes some getting used to, being a civilian."

"_Hello?"_

"Mike? It's Chakotay."

"_Hey, Cap. What's up? Oh, wait a minute – no, no, no. You're not going to cancel, are you? You can't. You just can't. Maria will kill me."_

"Relax, I'm still coming. I just wanted to check it's OK to bring someone."

There was a pause. _"Ah – sure. Of course it is. Anyone I know?"_

Chakotay glanced at Janeway, wondering how to answer. Before he could, she stepped forward, placing her hand over his to speak into the communicator.

"Mike? It's Kathryn Janeway here."

There was a slight choking sound on the other end of the line. _"C-captain?"_

"Not Captain," she corrected quietly. "Just Kathryn. Are you sure it's no trouble, me gatecrashing your afternoon?"

Chakotay could hear the grin in Mike's voice. _"No. No, not at all, Kathryn. It'll be wonderful to see you."_

"Thank you, that's very kind. What can I bring?"

There was another pause, and then Mike said, "You know what? I haven't made the potato salad yet."

Janeway looked away, smiling and shaking her head. "Potato salad?"

"_Yes, C… Kathryn. Think you could manage that?"_

"I can give it a try. Potato salad it is."

"_Great. I'll let Maria know. See you two later."_

Chakotay watched Janeway's face as he pocketed the communicator. She was still laughing about something, and shrugged when he caught her eye.

"Private joke," she explained.

"Is that right?" They were still standing very close. Chakotay reached out, smoothing a strand of hair behind her ear. "You'll have to tell me about it one day."

"Maybe I will."

"Potato salad?"

"Yes."

He thought for a second. "Turbolift malfunction? You two were-"

Janeway put her hand on his chest, right over his heart. "Don't," she said. "Let's not go back there. Not today."

"All right."

"Onwards," she said.

Chakotay nodded. "Onwards."

[END]

**A/N:** Missy has reminded me that we once had a conversation in which said something about me writing a story wherein our star-crossed lovers go shopping at Tesco... So I clearly have her to blame/thank for planting the seed for this story! ;)


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's note: **

I wasn't sure I was going to come back to this at all, but this swam out of the ether today. Thank you to MissyHissy3 for beta-reading, and so quickly!

* * *

Maria Ayala stood at the sink, running water over the salad and looking out into the sunlit backyard. In truth, she'd already rinsed the leaves once, but standing where she was gave her a chance to take a proper look at their unexpected extra guest.

Maria had met Kathryn Janeway just once before and then very briefly. It had been at the painfully stiff event that Starfleet described as _Voyager_'s homecoming ball. That had been a whirlwind of new faces punctuated by seemingly endless formal speeches from people who, as far as Maria had been able to see, had absolutely nothing to do with getting the ship home. _Voyager_'s return had become a boondoggle for power-hungry Starfleet personnel whose only interest in the ship and her crew was what fame and promotional good fortune the association with them could bring. Their speeches had rambled and aggrandised but not enlightened. Each had covered similar ground until they seemed to blend into one.

Janeway's own speech, by contrast, had been brief: she must have been on the podium for less than five minutes. Yet in her short words she had managed to convey perfectly the only sentiment that seemed to matter to her. "We've been away for a long time," she'd said. "But we're home now. We're with our families. We are back where we belong, at last. Every one of you helped to return us here. Thank you for your service. Thank you for your sacrifice and your patience. I will never forget any of you – not your faces, not your names, not your unerring dedication. Now enjoy being with your loved ones."

After that, Janeway had disappeared from view, swarmed by well-wishers, press and the Starfleet brass. There hadn't been much time to observe her, this woman who had crossed an unknown galaxy to bring her crew home. In the weeks and months that followed, Maria had often asked Chakotay about her, intrigued by the strength and nature implied both by the act that had stranded them in the Delta Quadrant, and the long years spent defending her ship and crew against all comers.

Chakotay never said much in his answers. Somehow though, Maria suspected this was not because he felt there was nothing to say, but rather that the subject of Kathryn Janeway was too vast for him to encapsulate in conversation.

"I will never know another person like her," he'd said, once. "There _is_ no one like her."

"Did they have a relationship?" Maria had asked Mike later that same night, once they'd seen the kids to bed. "Chakotay and Kathryn Janeway, I mean?"

Mike had given her a strange look. "What makes you ask that?"

"He doesn't say much, but when I ask about her I see a look in his eye that makes me think… I don't know, that he spends a lot of time thinking about her. So much that he can't talk about it. Does that make sense?"

Mike had leaned over and kissed her. "No. But then, you never did, beloved wife of mine. Seven years hasn't changed that."

She'd hit him, a punch on the arm accompanied by a half-annoyed laugh. "I'm serious! Did they?"

"No. They were in command together, Maria. They had other things to worry about."

She hadn't been able to get anymore out of Mike. Maybe there had been nothing to get, though those two had always been as thick as thieves and loyal with it. Maria had continued to ask Chakotay about Janeway, but his mild awkwardness and evasion had continued, and as the months had gone by, Maria had realised that even if there had been something between them, resolved or otherwise, to keep digging at it if it had been deliberately buried wasn't fair to him. So she'd let it go, and gradually forgotten her idle theories, though she'd not completely abandoned her personal fascination. Maria couldn't imagine commanding a Starship, spending every day in uniform, giving and obeying orders in the strict formation of life Starfleet commanded. She'd read somewhere recently that Janeway was about to take off on another deep-space expedition. Perhaps the woman had just been born under a wandering star and had iron in her backbone. Anyway, since Chakotay had chosen to take up a teaching position that would keep his feet firmly on Earth, Maria had stopped any contemplation of what may or may not have once been between them. It seemed possible that they may never meet again.

But now, out of the blue, here she was. Kathryn Janeway herself, in the Ayala's backyard. She was smaller than Maria remembered, petite in flat pumps. More surprising was the apprehension Maria sensed from her guest when she'd arrived with Chakotay. Nervous was not a word she would ever think of in association with the famed Starship captain that had defeated the Borg, but here at this family barbecue Janeway seemed wrong-footed, unsure of herself. This had eased a little in the hour or two since she had arrived, mainly, Maria believed, because of Chakotay's careful attention.

He'd given her space, introducing her to their other friends and then stepping back a little, but Chakotay had always remained within speaking distance, no matter whom he happened to be chatting to. His glance was often cast in Janeway's direction, though Maria found it difficult to read anything more in his expression than a friendly smile. He was watching out for her, though, making sure she was all right, and moreover Chakotay was doing it as if it were second nature to him, a reflex as natural as breathing.

Maria looked down at the half-drowned salad and turned off the faucet before dumping it all into a drainer. When she looked up again, Chakotay had disappeared.

"Maria?" A voice asked, unexpectedly. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

She was so startled she dropped the salad back in the sink. Spinning around, Maria found Chakotay standing behind her. "By all that's good," she exclaimed, "what are you doing sneaking up on people like that?"

"I don't think I was," Chakotay said, looking over her head and out of the window beyond. "You were just miles away."

Maria followed his gaze. It had been drawn once again to Janeway, who was standing in a shaft of sunlight beside the barbecue, laughing lightly at something Mike had said as he tended the food.

"I don't think I realised until now how beautiful she is, your Kathryn Janeway," Maria said. "I suppose it's pretty irrelevant alongside everything else. But she is… isn't she?"

Chakotay smiled at the question and turned away from the window with the smallest nod, which he used to indicate the thoroughly-washed salad. "Shall I find a bowl for that and take it outside?" He bent down to open one of the kitchen cupboards, reaching for a serving bowl.

"Wait just a minute," Maria said. "Now that I've got you on your own, you can tell me everything."

Chakotay straightened to put the bowl on the kitchen surface beside the sink, a frown on his face. "Everything?" Maria nodded surreptitiously towards Janeway, and then pointedly raised her eyebrows. He sighed. "There's nothing to say, Maria. I bumped into her this morning. I knew you'd like to meet her properly, and I thought Mike would probably like to see her again. I knew you wouldn't mind, so I invited her along, that's all."

"She just happened to be in your neighbourhood?"

"Yes."

"With a bowl of homemade potato salad in the back of her car?"

Chakotay frowned. "Sorry?"

"She arrived with a bowl of homemade potato salad, less than two hours after you'd called to ask if it was OK to bring her."

"Kathryn asked Mike what she should bring, and he suggested it. It made her laugh, I think it was some sort of joke between them. They were stuck in a turbolift together once and on comms I teased him about that incident years ago, with the potato salad, do you remember? They must have-"

"Where did she make it, Chakotay? Unless she lives near here, which as far as I know she doesn't, that's a bit of a mystery to me."

Chakotay blinked. "Kathryn used my kitchen at the apartment. I had to make the tomato salad anyway, so I told her to come back with me and make it there."

There was a moment of silence as they looked at each other. "Right," said Maria. "OK. So you bump into your old superior officer completely by chance in a supermarket, ask her to join you at a family barbecue, and take her back to yours so the two of you can make salad together for the occasion."

"Yes."

Maria narrowed her eyes. "Am I missing something?"

"What do you mean?"

She sighed. "Never mind. Have you talked to Cherry at all since you got here?"

"Cherry?"

"Yes, Cherry. The extremely attractive lecturer in Earth archaeology I invited along specifically to meet you this afternoon."

Chakotay looked out of the window. Cherry was deep in conversation with their neighbour, a sprightly grandfather in his 70s. They were both sitting by the pool, and the young woman had rolled up her jeans to dangle her slim legs in the water. "Oh, Doctor Weinstraub. Yes, I have. She's very nice. We had an interesting discussion about a dig down in Baja she's planning to visit during the summer vacation this year. I think they'll uncover some fascinating artefacts, if the preliminary scans are anything to go by. She might be able to offer a guest lecture to my students in the Fall."

Maria saw his gaze slip back to Janeway, as surely as a metal pin is drawn to a magnet. Kathryn had moved away from Mike and was standing alone, a drink held between both hands, apparently contemplating the sway of the old apple tree in the slight breeze.

"Her mother died a few weeks ago," Chakotay said, softly. "She wasn't here, and she feels so guilty about it – as if she didn't already have enough guilt to deal with."

Maria frowned. "I'm sorry to hear that."

"She has a habit of thinking that she has to deal with everything alone," Chakotay went on, just as quietly. "Kathryn Janeway is more comfortable with caring for than with being cared for."

Maria watched his face for a moment. "And that was your job, was it?" she asked. "Out there, in the Delta Quadrant? Caring for Kathryn Janeway?"

Chakotay smiled, but didn't look at her. "It wasn't a job, Maria."

She nodded. "You've missed her. Haven't you?"

There was a brief pause, and then he nodded. "It's not what you think," he added.

"I don't think it matters what I think," Maria told him. "What matters is what you think. And I suspect that whatever those thoughts are, they are quite often about her."

Chakotay laughed at that, somewhat abashed. "You always were too smart for your own good," he said. "How did you end up with a clown like Mike?"

Maria put a hand on his arm. "I nearly didn't. From what I remember, it took the intervention of someone else to make us see sense. Funny how that works sometimes, isn't it?"

He shook his head, still smiling. "It's not the right time, Maria," he said. "She just needs a friend, that's all."

Maria dropped her arm. "If there's one thing I know for certain in this life, Chakotay, it's that there's never a right time. Keep waiting for one, and there never will be. Come on," she added, nodding out of the window. "Before our favourite clown completely incinerates your aubergine."

Later that night, curled in a quiet bed, Maria watched the moonlight make lace on her wall as Mike's fingers traced patterns on her bare shoulder. _Seven years without him was bad enough,_ she thought to herself. _But seven years beside him, without this? _

"Penny for them?" Mike whispered in her ear.

She turned over, her face against his chest. "A penny? Gee, wowzers! What _shall_ I buy myself with the smallest possible denomination of an obsolete currency?"

"Fine. A replicator ration for your thoughts?"

"One lousy replicator ration? What am I going to make with that, half a cup of coffee?"

Mike made the sound of a long-suffering sigh. "All right, all right. One bar of gold-pressed latinum for your thoughts?"

"Better." Maria pressed a kiss to his skin. "What I am thinking is that he loves her. Doesn't he? Chakotay, I mean, and Kathryn."

Mike shifted to look at her better. "You got that from one afternoon with them?"

"Why, how long did it take you?"

"About four years."

"I've always said you were an idiot, Michael Ayala."

"Yeah, well."

"Does she love him?"

Mike sighed and rolled over so that she was beneath him. "I'm not sure," he said, "that love was ever the problem."

"Ooh," said Maria. "That's deep."

"I thought so."

"We should do something."

"I was thinking exactly the same thing," Mike murmured, kissing her neck.

"That's not what I meant."

"I know it's not what you meant," Mike said, kissing her again, "and the answer to the other thing is absolutely, definitely not."

"Yes, but-"

And that was the end of that particular conversation.

[TBC]


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: **Thanks, as always to MissyHissy3 for beta-reading. And thanks to everyone who's left a review, they are very much appreciated!

* * *

**Three**

The apple tree swayed in the breeze, its leaves rustling. There was fruit on its branches, Kathryn realised, and it wouldn't be long until it would be ripe for picking. _How wonderful to have a fruit tree in your own backyard_. The thought prompted a memory to rise, unbidden – the old tree in the Janeway's own family garden, a constant throughout her life. In her mind's eye she saw her mother, climbing it to gather the fruit into her apron, year after year, season after season. As children, Kathryn and Phoebe would stand below with buckets to gather in the produce their mother trundled down to them. Up and down, up and down, over and over, without hesitation, Gretchen Janeway would climb that ladder. That had changed as the years went by, so gradually that the significance had not struck Kathryn until this moment. She remembered, with a jolt, that even before _Voyager_'s sojourn, visits to her mother had often involved a request to get the apples in. _Did I?_ Kathryn asked herself, now. _Or did I dismiss it, as something insignificant? Did I see it as a chore? Did I have other things to do, more important things to talk about? _Then, tumbling towards her, came all the seasons she had missed by being so far away for so many years. How long had Gretchen gone on harvesting the apples herself? The climb would have become slower, more hesitant, as her mother's hair had faded, first to grey and then to white. Eventually Gretchen would have been forced to leave the picking to someone else, or, when there was no one else around, content herself with collecting the windfalls.

_This year, the fruit will go to waste,_ Kathryn thought, imagining the apples swelling past their prime on their branches, then falling to lie until they burst and rotted among the unkempt grass below.

Janeway turned away from the tree, her heart a heavy, thumping mass. Her throat was dry, and she took a hard mouthful of her wine to numb the threat of tears. She'd thought, apparently naively, that she would weather this loss better. Not that she loved her mother any less, but Janeway knew so well, now, the bitterly familiar ebb and flow of grief – the inevitable, inescapable undertow that carried one helplessly from anguish to guilt, from the temporary buoyancy of memory to the flat exhaustion of absolute depression. She'd thought she could outrun it, if not by working then by travelling. By moving on, moving on. But it hadn't worked. It wasn't working.

_Come on,_ she told herself. _Now is not the time._ _Hold it together._ _Imagine you're on the bridge. Imagine you're in uniform. _

Blinking, she looked around the rest of the Ayala's sunlit garden. There were eight people gathered on the modest property, dotted about as they chatted and relaxed. Mike was toiling in the smoke of the barbecue. The two Ayala boys were chasing each other up and down with what looked like giant water pistols, their shouts and laughter filling the space with joy and noise. Dr Weinstraub was laughing with Bill, the Ayala's neighbour. Maria and Chakotay were inside the house, their figures vaguely visible through the kitchen window.

_How did I end up here? _Janeway asked herself, not for the first time over the past few hours.

Chakotay, was the simple answer. The shock of seeing his face when she'd turned in that supermarket had been heightened precisely because she had been thinking of him that morning. She'd driven through the suburb, remembering the name from an association with him, and wondered where he was and what he was doing. It had been so long since they had spoken, and even longer since they'd seen each other.

Had she missed him? Had anyone asked her a few months ago, she would have said no, and believed what she'd said. What Janeway realised now, though, was that had probably been a deliberate decision rather than what was in her heart of hearts. How else to explain how comforting she had found his presence over the past few hours? It wasn't as if they'd spoken much. Even when they'd been working in his kitchen, crossing paths from work surface to sink, from chopping board to cupboard, they had moved around each other without hesitation and without need for apology or thanks. (Even, it had to be said, when she'd forgotten the potatoes on the stove as she'd searched for cumin and he'd had to rescue them from becoming a dissolved mess.) They had fallen into a pattern of industry, a method of working together that had always marked them as a productive team.

Janeway had definitely missed that - the security that came with standing beside someone who knew you almost better than you knew yourself. Chakotay was without a doubt the first officer who had got away – no one she'd worked with since had come close to matching what she'd found, unexpectedly, in the steadfast support of a man she'd been sent to imprison all those years ago.

Was that all it was though, this sense of comfort - the security of familiarity? As difficult as life on _Voyager_ had been, it had also, in some ways, been brutally simple. The limits of their world had been inside that ship, a microcosmic Federation, a little Earth. Whatever differences and personality clashes arose, they had to cling to each other as the last remnants of a recognisable life. Now, back again, that horizon had expanded exponentially and it wasn't always easy to navigate. _Hence the lychees,_ she thought to herself, wryly. _And also, perhaps… _ She tried to stop herself there, but couldn't.

Chakotay had led her into his apartment and Janeway had discovered something else she'd forgotten. The place smelled like him. If someone had asked her to describe it she would find it impossible, and yet she walked through his front door and her heart had hitched, as it had so many times on _Voyager_. On those occasions she had snuffed the extra beat so quickly she could pretend it had never been there at all, but now…

At that moment, Chakotay reappeared, re-entering the sunlight carrying a bowl of salad. Maria was close behind him, her own hands full.

"Is there anything I can do?" Janeway asked, as he walked to her with a smile, dropping off the bowl on the buffet table as he passed.

"No, I think we're pretty much there. Right, Mike?"

"Right!" Mike Ayala said, triumphantly, holding up a covered platter. "Come and get it before–"

Mike's words were drowned out by the sound of water, overlaid by the shrieks of the two boys. Janeway jumped back as, right in front of her, twin streams sluiced from the boys' water pistols to engulf Chakotay. They had chosen to attack him from either side for maximum soakage, and they had not missed their mark. Janeway couldn't help but laugh at the look of utter shock that crossed his face. She put her hands up to her mouth, still laughing as his shock faded, watching as his dismay turned into a smile at her reaction.

"Boys!" Maria Ayala yelled, incensed, "We're just about to eat!"

Chakotay spun away from Kathryn, laughing as he lunged for the nearest boy – Thomas, the younger one, who skipped out of the way, following his brother as they dashed to the other end of the garden to escape. Chakotay followed, dripping water, unwilling to let his attackers get away. The sound of utter pandemonium reigned until Maria's voice cut through the melee.

"Chakotay!" she yelled, "Enough! Go get a towel, for goodness' sake! Boys – I will deal with you later!"

Chakotay, still laughing, turned back towards the house. The boys followed, jostling each other as they congratulated themselves on a job well done. Janeway watched with narrowed eyes. She could tell from the tension in his shoulders that Chakotay hadn't let his guard down. He paused for a fraction of a second, letting the boys draw level with him. Then, in one fluid movement, he turned, grabbed a child in each arm and lifted them as they shouted in surprise. He took two steps towards the pool and jumped, plunging all three of them into it. Doctor Weinstraub and Bill dodged the ensuing tidal wave, leaping to their feet as Chakotay and the children disappeared in a cacophony of shrieks, only to surface again a few seconds later.

"Oh, for crying out loud," exclaimed Maria, turning to Janeway, who was laughing anew. "I swear, they never grow up. _Never._ Out!" Maria shouted, in a voice as stern as any order Janeway had ever given. "Out, out, out!"

Three drenched figures made it to the pool's edge. The boys hauled themselves out, still helpless with laughter, as Chakotay paused for a moment, catching his breath. Janeway was about to go over and give him a hand when a figure beat her to it. Doctor Weinstraub reached down to him, her long dark hair falling towards him. Chakotay smiled up at her, taking her hand and placing his other flat on the side of the pool to lift himself clear of the water. Janeway watched as, a moment later, the two of them stood face to face. Chakotay lifted his arms to push his wet hair out of his eyes and Janeway was suddenly aware that his loose white linen shirt was now both stuck to his body and entirely transparent. She felt herself flush and looked away, though not before it occurred to her that since _Voyager_'s return her first officer must have been working on getting himself back to peak fitness.

"Thanks," she heard Chakotay say.

"You're welcome. That's some military tactic you've got there."

Chakotay's laugh was easy, relaxed. "An old Maquis trick, I'm afraid. Fight dirty to win."

"Seems to work."

"Sometimes, but not always."

Maria, having sent the boys inside to change, turned on Chakotay. "Go get something of Mike's to wear, Chakotay," she said, "you look like a drowned rat."

As Chakotay headed inside, Kathryn found herself turning back to watch him leave. Doctor Weinstraub was doing the same.

"I hope he was better behaved when he was your second in command," Maria said.

Janeway started, realising that Maria had been watching her for a few moments. Cherry Weinstraub turned towards them both, her face curious.

"Good god," said the younger woman. "You're Captain Janeway. _The_ Captain Janeway. When we were chatting earlier - I didn't realise who you were. You – you look very different from all the holofootage, and Chakotay just introduced you as Kathryn. I'm so sorry."

Janeway forced a smile, feeling awkward at suddenly being put on the spot. Bill was also watching her with renewed interest. "Really – I'd prefer to be just Kathryn, if you don't mind."

"Of course. It's nice, though, to see that the crew of _Voyager_ have stayed so close."

Janeway smiled. "I'm afraid I can't take the credit for that. I actually haven't seen Chakotay – or the rest of the crew, for that matter – in months. I really should make more of an effort, but you know how life is."

"Oh," said Weinstraub, with evident surprise. "I thought-" she glanced towards the house. "Sorry, I just assumed that, as you arrived together, you and Chakotay were a couple."

Kathryn swallowed, flushing again and hoping to god it wasn't showing on her face. She also had the distinct impression that both the Ayalas were watching for her reaction. Was the rumour mill still turning, she wondered, even at this far a remove? "Oh, no. No, nothing like that. Just friends, that's all."

"Right," said Cherry. Was it Janeway's imagination, or did she see a glint of relief in the woman's eyes?

"I overheard you talking about the dig you're planning in a few weeks, Doctor Weinstraub," Kathryn said, wanting to move the conversation on. "I'd love to hear more about it."

"I'm happy to oblige, although I can't imagine it could possibly rival what you saw out there in the Delta Quadrant," the younger woman laughed. "And please, Kathryn – call me Cherry. 'Doctor Weinstraub' sounds too much like my mother."

Chakotay chose that moment to reappear, herding the two – now dry - boys in front of him. He was dressed in a close-fitting grey t-shirt and long black shorts.

"Couldn't find anything else that would fit," he explained, throwing a teasing look at Ayala. "Mike always was on the short and scrawny side."

"Oi, watch it or you'll end up in the pool again," his friend advised him. "You're not my commanding officer any more, remember? No more rules to tell me what I can and can't do to you."

Janeway glanced at Chakotay and found him watching her. Their eyes met, just for a second. "Yes," he said. "I'm well aware of that."

"Can we actually eat now?" Maria asked. "Or would you all prefer to wait until the food's a little more burned?"

[TBC]


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: ** As always, thank you to the very wonderful MissyHissy3 for beta-reading. And thanks to everyone who has reviewed!

**Chapter Four**

It was dusk when Chakotay and Janeway left the Ayala's. Mike had offered to fire up the barbecue again and cook some more food for the evening, but they both declined. Chakotay had already eaten far more than he would usually, as is the way with such things. Besides, he could tell that Kathryn was, if not exactly eager to leave, then not particularly anxious to stay. He could have let her go without him, of course, even though it was she who had given him a lift earlier that afternoon. He'd walked home from the Ayala's place plenty of times, and it was a balmy evening. But he didn't want to say goodbye to her yet. He didn't want to waste whatever opportunity had presented itself by their chance meeting.

They said little on the drive back to his apartment. Janeway seemed to grow pensive and somewhat distracted, and Chakotay didn't press her. He watched her from the corner of his eye, instead, wondering what she was thinking. There would have been a time when he'd have put money on being able to tell, but not any more. Looking at her now, he realised afresh how much he had missed her – just her presence, which had been a constant in his life for seven years. The frank fact was that he missed her face, Chakotay realised, missed the familiar beauty of it simply being a part of his day.

Janeway pulled the hovercar to a stop outside his block and hesitated a moment before turning to him with a wan smile. She kept the engine running, the soft sound permeating the early evening air.

"Thank you for today," she said. "It was… good to see you again, Chakotay."

"Why don't you come in for a coffee?" he said. "Unless you have somewhere else you need to be?"

A flicker of something passed over her face – anxiety? – and Kathryn glanced up at the apartment block. Was she uncomfortable at the idea of being in his home, he wondered? She had seemed perfectly relaxed earlier.

"We… can go to a café, if you'd prefer?" Chakotay suggested. "There's one a block or so from here…"

Janeway smiled and switched off the hovercar's engine. "No," she said. "I'd love a coffee, thank you, and your place will be just fine."

Once inside, she wandered about, looking at his shelves, tracing her fingers over his accumulated trinkets. Chakotay wondered if she recognised the ones he had brought back from _Voyager_, but thought it was probably unlikely. He could count on one hand the times Kathryn had been inside his quarters aboard that ship, and each of those had been brief.

"Here," he said, catching up with her as she ran her fingertips along the spines of his reference books and handing her a mug.

"Thank you. I like that you have actual books," she told him. "You don't see them often nowadays."

Chakotay smiled. "I've been collecting antiquarian volumes since we got back. The illustrations are often useful for lectures, particularly the old photographs of dig sites. Such a lot of images are lost in the transitions between digital storage formats."

Kathryn nodded, taking a sip of coffee. "I heard Doctor Weinstraub suggest you visit her dig site in Baja in a few weeks – are you tempted to go? It sounds fascinating."

"It does," he agreed, "but I'm not really a field archaeologist any more. Probably best to leave the hard work to the younger generation."

Janeway smiled at that. "You're not exactly over the hill, Chakotay."

He smiled back. "Maybe not. Just feels like it, sometimes."

She turned away to look out of his window. His apartment was on the fifth floor, and gave a good view of the city lights that were just beginning to burst into life as the dark took hold.

"Well," Kathryn said, quietly. "I guess I can understand that."

Chakotay watched her for a moment. "Is there anything I can do to help?" he asked.

She looked up, surprise flickering in her eyes for a moment. Janeway shook her head. "You have," she said, "this afternoon – I think I almost forgot, for a while. But you of all people know what it's like, Chakotay. You've lost so many people, more than I can even comprehend. It never goes away, does it? You just… learn to get on with it. I guess I haven't quite got there yet. Right now it doesn't feel as if I ever will. I keep remembering things I want to tell her. Things I'll never be able to, now. My mother's gone. She's just gone, and I wasn't here, and there are so many-" she broke off, abruptly.

Chakotay put down his mug and took hers from her fingers, standing them both on the window ledge before placing one hand on her shoulder. She sagged a little at his touch, and he pulled her into a light embrace.

"I'm sorry," she said, painfully, against his shoulder. "I'm sorry."

"There's nothing to be sorry for," Chakotay told her, rubbing one hand up and down her back. He wondered whether anyone else had offered her such a thing as simple physical comfort. Her sister, perhaps. There had been several times he'd wanted to reach out to her like this on _Voyager_, but there he never would have dared. She'd never have allowed it.

Janeway pulled away. He loosened his grip, but maintained contact. She looked up at him with a sigh. "This is what happens when I don't work," she said.

He laughed a little. "No, Kathryn, this is what happens when you're human."

She smiled, looking at him with a kind of open affection that took Chakotay by surprise. For a second she looked as if she was going to lean into him again, and then, to his astonishment, her gaze dropped to his lips. A second later Janeway seemed to catch herself and took a step back, out of his reach. She turned away, reached for her coffee and finished it in one go.

"Thank you, Chakotay," she said. "It's been a lovely day. But I have to get going, I still have a ways to get home."

She was across the room before he had a chance to reply. Chakotay followed her.

"Kathryn," he said. "Wait."

She paused and he could see her shoulders tensed against a fear he couldn't really comprehend. She turned, and seemed to have to force herself to look at him. Her jaw was set in a familiar line, and for a second he could almost imagine she was back in uniform.

"Look," he said, "let's not lose touch again. OK? Why don't we have dinner in a week or so?"

An expression passed Kathryn's face, something that looked fleetingly like regret. She schooled it into impassivity as she said, "I don't know, Chakotay. I – I have so much to deal with at the moment."

"I know. I understand. Just – keep in touch this time. Please?"

Janeway nodded, without really looking at him. "Yes – I will. I really have to go, now. Thank you… Really."

He smiled, though he wasn't sure she'd seen it. "Any time."

**xXx**

Kathryn slid into the driver's seat and passed an unsteady hand over her face. _Dinner?_ she thought, _With him?_ A memory presented itself, of the two of them sharing a meal in her quarters, laughing over yet another failed attempt to get her replicator to produce what she'd ordered. A sense of longing suffused her, followed swiftly by a pang of loneliness that clenched her heart tight in her chest.

_This,_ she told herself, _is exactly the problem. This is why you can't trust yourself. These momentary lapses, when suddenly all you want is to be with him. Is it him, really? Or is it what he represents – a steady rock to lean on, just as he always was in the Delta Quadrant? It wasn't fair to him then, and you always knew it. How can it be any fairer to him now, when you don't know what you want? When you can't trust what you're feeling? What if it's just the grief? What if it's just the need for something familiar, something comforting? _

Three months ago, she'd reminded herself, she'd been far away from here, busy with work and doing perfectly well without him. Surely that told her something?

With a sigh, Janeway started the car and pulled away from the curb. Above her, the stars glinted, content in their place in the universe, secure in their position as nothing but the last vestiges of a life already lived. She envied them their certainty. The universe was so much easier to deal with when the rules had already been set by a power greater than your own.

[TBC]


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: **Thanks, as always, to my super-speedy beta, MissyHissy3! Also, I love everyone who has reviewed, thank you so much. Just a short bit today.

**Chapter Five**

Weeks went by, and life went on. The semester lengthened and aged, and Kathryn Janeway did not keep her word. Chakotay tried contacting her once or twice, but without success. Either she was not inclined to reply to his messages or she was travelling again. Whatever the reason and wherever she was, she made no attempt to contact him, and so he had to assume the evasion was deliberate.

In the wake of their meeting, Maria Ayala had gone back to asking about Kathryn almost every time he saw her. In the end, one night while Mike was checking on the boys after an afternoon out at Glen Canyon, Chakotay told her how that evening had ended.

"You shouldn't have let her go," Maria Ayala told him, with what seemed to be genuine sadness.

Chakotay shrugged. "I tried to offer her help. I asked her to stay in touch. I've tried to call her since. What else could I do?"

Even she was forced to concede the point. "It's just so sad," Maria said. "I can't help but think… I'm not wrong that there was something between you, am I?"

Chakotay opened another bottle of beer before he answered. "What did Mike tell you?"

"Not a thing."

"Really?"

"Really. Well. Nothing useful, anyway."

Chakotay scrubbed a nail against the label on the bottle as he tried to work out how to put it all into words. That, he realised, was a pretty good assessment of their entire relationship – the perpetual inability to quantify or verbalise what was between them. Or what had been, anyway. He sighed.

"There was something. But it never became anything. And now… now I think it's just too late. Maybe she's decided once and for all that I'm not what she wants, or maybe she's too hesitant to try it and find out. Either way, there's nothing I can do about it."

"I can't believe she doesn't feel anything for you," said Maria. "She could hardly keep your eyes off you when you dragged your sorry butt out of the pool that day."

Chakotay laughed. "I find that hard to believe!"

"Believe it, mister. You scrub up pretty well, even to an old married woman like me."

He shook his head. "She always was full of surprises. Kept me on my toes for seven years, that's for sure."

Maria sighed. "So, what are you going to do?"

"Do?"

"You're still single," Maria pointed out, "and it's still just plain wrong."

Chakotay shook his head. "You never give up, do you? Maria, I'm happy as I am. My life isn't over just because I don't have a wife and children. There are many ways of being, isn't that the saying?"

"True," Maria agreed.

"So can we agree to drop the subject? Please? For good?"

Maria let the silence hang for a little bit before she said, "All right."

He sighed with relief, and made sure it was audible. "Thank you."

"I saw Cherry for coffee the other day," Maria went on, almost without a pause.

Chakotay groaned. "I could dispose of you, you know. Mike's busy. I could just knock you over the head, and–"

"She's off to Baja on Monday. She said she'd talked to you about going down to the dig site the week after next."

"Yes," he had to admit. "She called me at the Academy last week."

"So? Are you going to go?"

"Maybe. I haven't decided yet. But Maria, if I do – I'm going for the dig, nothing else. OK?"

Maria smiled. She got up from her chair and came to sit next to him on the couch, close enough to envelop him in a hug. He held her close, and realised something.

"Wait a minute," Chakotay said, pulling back and looking down at her belly, which seemed to have a soft round to it.

She grinned. "Yes?"

"You didn't actually climb with us today."

"This is true."

"You inexplicably stuck the gherkin from your patty into the peanut butter."

"Did I really?"

"Something you and Mike want to tell me?"

Maria laughed, and kissed him on the cheek. "She's due in January. Finally, this house will have another girl in it."

A lump formed in his throat and with it, a shocking and completely inexplicable urge to cry. Chakotay found his voice untrustworthy, and so pulled her to him again instead.

When they separated, Maria held him by the shoulders and looked into his face. "All of this stuff," she said, quietly. "The ships we build, the places we visit, the stars we see. None of that has a point without something to come home to. Didn't you spend seven years trying to do just that? I want you to have something to come home to, Chakotay. That's all."

A week later, at a dinner catch-up with B'Elanna and Tom Paris, Chakotay found out where Janeway was.

"I saw Harry the other week," Tom told him.

"How's he doing now that he's finally made Lieutenant?" Chakotay asked, engrossed in some kind of game with Miral that seemed to involve her attempting to throw her toys to a new area of the floor every time he retrieved them.

"Really good. He shipped out to his new assignment on Monday. You'll never guess who his captain is."

Chakotay looked up. "Who?"

"It's Janeway," said Tom. "I can't believe it's a coincidence, can you? I mean, how many ships does Starfleet crew every month? She must have requested him."

Chakotay smiled and picked up a discarded rhinoceros. "Maybe she did. Well, good for Harry. At least he knows he's in good hands."

"Haven't you finished teaching for the summer now?" B'Elanna asked him. "What are you going to do with all your long, lazy days? If you're at a loose end, we're always looking for reliable babysitters, you know."

"Actually, I've got plans," he told her. "I'm off down to a dig at Baja next week."

"Oh?" B'Elanna looked surprised. "You never mentioned that as a possibility before."

Chakotay touched Miral's cheek and got to his feet. "Kind of a last minute decision," he said.

[TBC]


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter six**

Chakotay had forgotten just how exhausting working on an archaeological dig could be. He'd spent the past four days on his knees in the sandy desert soil of Las Pintas, grateful for the shade cast by the massive rock formations that towered between the arid hills surrounding the dig site. The area had been of historical interest for centuries because of the abundance of geometric patterns painted and scratched all over those soaring rocks. Until recently, it had been assumed that the people responsible for the carvings – probably the Kumeyaay – were nomadic, moving from one rich pre-historical hunting ground to another through the course of the seasons. What Doctor Weinstraub and her students were excitedly beginning to realise, however, was that the people who had populated this place in antiquity might actually have had a more permanent attachment to this precise area. Certainly the artefacts the team had already pulled from the dig site seemed to support that theory.

He paused and sat back on his haunches, reaching for his water bottle. Chakotay's gaze was drawn by the huge, angular rock masses that framed his view to the left and right. Around their heights wheeled carrion birds, their harsh calls echoing along the valley of stone, their large wings casting shadows as they passed through the sun-bright, cloudless sky.

His back ached. He'd been right, he was too old for this – and yet for all that, Chakotay was enjoying his stay. They were a long way from modern civilization, and so the ten-strong team had pitched a camp at the far end of the valley, a medley of tents around a makeshift firepit, over which they'd been gathering to cook their food each evening. In some ways it reminded Chakotay of trips with Kolopak during his childhood, when it had just been the two of them immersed entirely in nature. He'd spent a lifetime among the teeming cosmos, and yet on trips like this Chakotay realised just how easy it was to take something for granted. Watching the stars from here, where there was no light or noise pollution to disturb his gaze, brought home to him their isolated beauty. Occasionally Chakotay would find himself the last person left awake, sitting beside the dying fire and watching the stars above. Now and then something he'd originally taken to be a star would move, traversing the heavens at speed, and he'd realise that it was a satellite, or perhaps even a starship. He'd wonder, then, if it was her was up there, still looking for whatever it was she hadn't yet found.

His trip was due to finish the following day, but as tired as he was, Chakotay wasn't really looking forward to returning home. Here, he was busy – and since an excavation like this required minute concentration, his mind was occupied as well as his body. That was what he wanted right now – to work, not to think. Depositing his water onto the scrubby desert grass, he reached for his trowel again.

"Why don't you take a longer break?" Cherry's voice echoed to him over his shoulder. "You've certainly earned it."

Chakotay straightened up to face her with a smile, ignoring the protest from his back. "No, I'm all right. Just hot."

Doctor Weinstraub smiled, pushing her sunglasses up into her hair so as to see him better. "We'll be breaking for lunch in an hour or so. You may or may not be surprised to hear that I have it on reliable authority that beans will be involved."

Chakotay laughed. Beans had been rather a constant on the menu over the past few days. "What a relief," he said, "I was beginning to worry we'd run out."

"No fear of that, I'm afraid." Cherry peered past him. "Anything interesting?"

"Actually, I think so," said Chakotay, as they both dropped into a crouch. He indicated the faint semi-circular line of solid bone matter he'd discovered a couple of hours ago and had been carefully edging ever since.

"Oh, my," said Cherry. "Could that be a mandible?"

Chakotay nodded. "Certainly looks that way. I didn't want to say anything until I'd uncovered more of it, but look – that seems to be the bottom of a tooth, still intact."

Doctor Weinstraub reached out and gently ran a finger over the indentation. "I think you're right, Chakotay. What a find! I'll get Baz and Lily to come and help you after lunch. This could be the most important artefact of the entire dig," she rested a hand on his arm. "There now, aren't you glad you came?"

He smiled. "Yes, very much so."

Cherry returned the smile and stood, dropping her sunglasses back over her eyes.

**xXx**

There was something of a party atmosphere to the camp that evening. By concentrating their efforts on Chakotay's find, they had uncovered a section of what they now suspected to be a remarkably complete skeleton. The discovery had bought the expedition an extra two weeks of both time and funding from the University of California, under whose jurisdiction Doctor Weinstraub was operating. The mood among the students was buoyant, the laughter raucous. The sound they made drifted into the clear desert night air with the sparks from their fire, carried away into the epic expanse of night above them.

Chakotay, tired and aching but happy on the team's behalf, sat back and watched the stars. It wasn't until Cherry Weinstraub came and sat beside him that he realised it must have grown quite late. Apart from two of the students, who were canoodling with what they must have thought was discretion on the other side of the fire, everyone else had gone to bed.

He sat up and shifted a little uncomfortably, wondering what she was expecting from him. Chakotay had come down here on the spur of the moment, not only because he was genuinely interested in the dig and needed something to busy him, but also because he'd had the sudden feeling that he really needed to do something positive to move on, and perhaps Cherry Weinstraub was the right place to start. But over the days he'd been here, Chakotay had realised it wasn't going to work. Perhaps if he hadn't bumped into Kathryn on the day of the barbecue, it would have been different. Perhaps Maria's matchmaking would have worked. He liked Cherry, he really did. But the longer he'd been here, the more Chakotay had found that there was just something… off. It was his own equilibrium, he'd realised. He needed to get that under control again first, or it just wouldn't be fair, and he was old and wise enough to know, now, that perhaps he never would. What he'd thought for a long time now – that he was just fine on his own - maybe that really was the case for him. So he'd avoided being alone with Cherry too much, unsure of her reasons for inviting him in the first place and unwilling to find out in awkward circumstances.

"Are you all right?" she asked, quietly. "I get the impression you're a little pre-occupied."

"Just tired, really. I'd forgotten what being on an excavation was like, to be honest."

Cherry smiled. "You don't have to work as hard as you have been, you know," she told him. "I invited you down here as my guest to have a look around, not as an extra pair of hands. You've been working like a carthorse since you got here."

Chakotay smiled. "I've enjoyed it. Really," he assured her, as she glanced at him with a raised eyebrow. "Sitting in an office all day – or a lecture hall, for that matter – isn't really me."

Weinstraub drew her legs up to her chest. "Why do you do it, then?" she asked, tipping her head back to look up at the stars. "Why did you leave Starfleet when you got back? Why didn't you go out there again?"

Chakotay followed her gaze and shrugged. "I don't know. Just… needed some air, I guess. Some time to think."

From the corner of his eye, he saw her nod, as if that made perfect sense to her. "I suppose it would have been very different, anyway, wouldn't it?" she asked. "Different to how it was aboard _Voyager_."

"Yes," he agreed, surprised at her astute observation.

"Maria wants me to ask you out," Cherry said suddenly, into the silence that followed. "She thinks she's being subtle, but she's really not."

He laughed, the sound covering the jolt of surprise he felt at her frank admission. "Yes… that sounds like Maria…"

"I'm not going to," Doctor Weinstraub added, turning to look at him. "In the first place, I know the reason you came down here wasn't to get closer to me. I can tell you just wanted to work. And work is really the only reason why I asked you to come, anyway. Well," she amended, with a slight bob of her head and a smile, "almost the only reason, anyway. I wouldn't have said anything at all, but I'm just telling you this so that you can pass it on to Maria. Because you and I both know she'll want to know exactly what happened and neither of us will get any rest if there's no straight answer."

Chakotay nodded with slightly self-conscious laugh. "True…"

"Don't get me wrong, I'd like to. Ask you out, I mean," Cherry went on. "I really would. But the thing is, I don't think…" she trailed off, scuffing a heel in the sand and fading into silence.

"You don't think what?"

She looked at him again, her dark eyes flickering gold in the dying firelight. After a moment, she said, "I really like you, Chakotay. You're a good man and, frankly, as hot as this desert at midday. We've obviously got a lot in common. I think we'd probably enjoy each other's company, don't you?"

He nodded.

"So," Cherry sighed, "if I thought we'd have a chance at something solid, I'd take it like a shot."

Chakotay looked away. "But?"

"But… I think you've got unfinished business elsewhere. Am I right?"

He looked at her. "No. Not really. Well…" he trailed off, searching for the truth in his own mind.

Cherry laughed. "Uh huh. Well, I'm completely convinced."

Chakotay sighed. "Cherry – I think you might have got the wrong end of the stick. I'm not – there's no other relationship. I just…"

"You're finding it hard to move on?"

He nodded. "Yes. It's hard to explain to someone who wasn't there," he said. "_Voyager _wasn't just a ship, and we weren't just on a journey. It was our life. I guess that's what I'm still adjusting to. The fact that my whole life is different now. My whole family, in some ways."

She smiled at him. "Mike seems to have adjusted pretty well."

Chakotay stared at the fire again. "He had Maria and the boys to come home to. That helped, I think."

Cherry was silent for a moment. Then she picked up a twig and tossed it into the fire, sending a flurry of sparks into the air. "Well then," she said, quietly, "perhaps you need someone to help you, too. Someone who does understand – someone who was there, all the way through." She leaned towards him, and before he realised what she was doing, had kissed him softly on the lips. "I'm smart enough not to get into the middle of that. But, if whatever it is that isn't finished doesn't work out? Believe me – I'd welcome a call. Because I do like you, Mr Chakotay. Very much indeed."

Chakotay reached up and touched her face, but didn't lean into her again. "I'll remember that."

Cherry nodded with a smile, and stood up. "That's that, then. Moving on, you're more than welcome to stay until the end of the dig. If you can bear more beans, that is."

He smiled and stood. "Thank you, but I think I'll head back after tomorrow. There's only so much abuse my back can take."

Doctor Weinstraub laughed. "Is that so? Duly noted…"

[TBC]


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter seven**

Chakotay reached home the following evening. Doctor Weinstraub had given him a lift to the nearest transport hub, a good two hours' drive from the dig site. They had parted easily, exchanging a wish to stay in touch, both as friends and as colleagues. Chakotay pondered this as he walked through a balmy San Franciscan evening at the other end of his journey. Cherry's straightforward nature was refreshing, he reflected. Would that all relationships were as simple.

The traffic of the city was jarring after the quiet of the desert. Chakotay was looking forward to a shower as soon as he got in, having made do with the occasional douse from a water bottle for the past few days. He shouldered open the doubled doors and walked into the wide, white foyer of his block, hunting through his pack for his key card.

"Ahh, Mr Chakotay," said Tony, the building's supervisor and de facto concierge. "I've got something for you. Hold on." The little man disappeared into the back room and emerged a few minutes later carrying a large oblong parcel, wrapped neatly and securely in brown paper. "Here we go."

"What's this?" Chakotay asked in surprise, taking the package.

"No idea, sorry. Want me to take it up for you?"

"No, that's fine. Thanks, Tony." He headed for the lift, his arms protesting at the weight in them. Whatever the package was, it was heavy.

Reaching his apartment door, Chakotay wrestled the parcel under one arm and pressed his keycard against the doorpad. It slid open silently and he stepped inside and put the parcel down on the low table in front of his couch. He sighed in relief, a little surprised at how glad he was to be home. _Seven years on _Voyager_ made you soft,_ he told himself. _Press a button to make dinner, press a button to visit anywhere… you've forgotten what real life is like. _

Stretching, he looked at the mysterious parcel again. As desperate for a shower and a change of clothes as he was, curiosity won out. Chakotay went to the kitchen and found a pair of scissors before carefully slitting open the brown paper.

Inside was a pile of books. They were old, leather-bound and gilt-edged, beautifully embossed and decorated, tied lightly together with a wide white ribbon, because whoever had sent them to him had known and cared that string would have been too harsh on the ancient bindings. There was a piece of paper, folded in half and pushed beneath the point where the ribbon crossed over the uppermost volume. Chakotay pulled it out and opened the note.

_Chakotay,_

_I think you will be able to give these a better home than I can._

_Best wishes,_

_KJ_

He stared at the brief words for a moment, and then rubbed a hand across his eyes. Janeway really was gone then. She must know it was to be a long trip, too – emptying an apartment was something of a ritual for officers embarking on a lengthy assignment. What couldn't fit into quarters aboard ship or was too fragile to go into storage for the duration was divided up among friends and family. It was symbolic as well as practical, the bequeath providing a memento to remember the departed by, whatever might happen on their travels through the unpredictable universe.

Chakotay got to his feet, leaving the books where they were. He didn't have the strength to look through them right then. If he did he'd begin to imagine under what circumstances she might have bought them and where her fingers might have touched the pages. He might have thought about her and gone on thinking about her, and he didn't want to, not when by now she was already light years away and evidently not coming back.

**xXx**

He saw the Ayala's a few days later. Mike had wanted a hand emptying the spare room ready to decorate for the baby and Chakotay was happy to oblige if it meant Maria could avoid doing any heavy lifting. Once it was done, they sat around the dinner table over a delicious meal that – thank the spirits – featured no trace of beans.

"Well, you can't blame a woman for trying," was Maria's response to Chakotay's detailed description of his conversation with Cherry. "Smart girl, that one. Don't worry Chakotay, I've learned my lesson. I'll leave you alone from now on, I promise."

Chakotay smiled at her affectionately. "I'll believe it when I see it."

He didn't tell them about Kathryn's gift of the books, which still lay exactly where he had opened them, half-in and half-out of their wrapping. Chakotay still hadn't been able to bring himself to go through them yet.

He would, soon. Just not yet.

[TBC]


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N: **I haven't thanked my beta MissyHissy3 for the past couple of chapters but she has been brilliant, as usual!

**Chapter Eight**

It was a week before Chakotay returned to Kathryn's books. When he did decide to unpack them properly the decision came unexpectedly, in the wake of another run on the beach. He got home, out of breath and drenched in sweat, and their neat pile was the first thing he saw, still sitting there with their half-removed wreath of brown paper.

_Enough is enough,_ he told himself. _Shower, then put them away on your shelves. Don't let them gather any more dust._

Fresh from his shower, hair still wet, he grabbed a glass of water from his kitchen before sitting on the couch in front of the books. With a breath that could have been a sigh, Chakotay pulled the pile towards him, undid the ribbon that tied them together and then lifted them out one by one.

Each volume was a work of natural and human history – there were several beautiful volumes from _Audubon's Birds of America_; early folio editions of works about Egyptian and Mycenean archaeology and catalogs of exhibitions as held at the British Museum and the Smithsonian. Chakotay ran his hands over their covers and turned their pages with a growing sense of astonishment. He hadn't known that these subjects held any particular interest for Kathryn – they certainly weren't areas their conversations had strayed into during their years in the Delta Quadrant. Yet she wouldn't have purchased these on a whim – he had a good idea of just how valuable the cache of literature in front of him was. As Janeway had observed herself, you rarely saw real books nowadays, and it was even rarer to see volumes of such an age, let alone in such good condition. She must have collected these, carefully and over some period of time.

A suspicion began to niggle at the back of his mind. Chakotay opened one of the volumes to its front flyleaf, already suspecting what he may find there. Sure enough, tipped in to the front of one of the Audubon's was a bookplate bearing the owner's hand-written name.

_From the library of_

_Vice Admiral Edward Janeway_

Chakotay stared at the name for a moment, and then sat back.

They were her father's books.

He rubbed a hand across his face as the shock washed over him. Kathryn must have been clearing out her parents' house in the wake of her mother's death. In the midst of that stress and grief, she'd chosen to give him some of her father's books, simply because she knew from that visit a few weeks ago that he would appreciate them.

Chakotay swallowed. He knew how dear Kathryn's father had been to her. These volumes must have been part of a collection that had taken many years for Edward Janeway to compile – they must have been something he treasured, something he cared about, something very precious to him. And Kathryn Janeway had seen fit to pass them on to Chakotay, just on the strength of the briefest of conversations.

He stood up, suddenly overwhelmed. Chakotay picked up his drink – now almost empty – and walked to the kitchen. He refilled his glass and drank from it while staring blindly out of the window above the sink.

His breathing was slowly returning to normal when something else occurred to him. Chakotay put down the glass and walked back towards the table on which the books lay. He retrieved the torn brown paper and turned it over, looking for something that he was resolutely unable to find. There had been no address written on the package.

He got up again and went to his door, pressing the key to contact the building's concierge.

"Afternoon, Mr Chakotay," Tony greeted him brightly, appearing on the small screen above the keypad. "What can I do for you?"

"Hi, Tony. It's about the package you took in for me while I was in Baja. Do you remember it?"

"The heavy one?"

Chakotay nodded. "That's right. Was it delivered by hand?"

"Yes, it was. I remember because when she found out you weren't here, she asked if she should put a name and apartment number on it, but I told her not to worry, I'd remember all right."

Chakotay's heart tightened. "She?"

"Yes – do you know what, I didn't even recognise her at first. In fact, I only put two-and-two together when I saw her picture on an archive vid a couple of days back. It was your Captain Janeway."

Chakotay nodded, feeling slightly numb. "All right. Thanks, Tony." He cut off the transmission and turned back to look at the books. It made sense, he supposed. She wouldn't want to trust a package so important to anyone else, so she'd brought it herself. But it also meant that she hadn't cut him off completely before she'd left. Kathryn had made an attempt to see him again, it was just a pity he'd obviously not been in when she had. Although why it had taken so long for Tony to give him the package was beyond Chakotay. She must have dropped it off at least two weeks ago, and the concierge was usually far more efficient than that.

A sudden thought stilled him. He stared at the books again, at the crumpled paper strewn around them. He reached for the keypad.

"Tony, I'm sorry to bother you again."

"No problem, Mr Chakotay. What's up?"

"When did Captain Janeway drop the parcel off, can you remember?"

"Oh yes. It was the day before you came back from your trip. Wednesday last, was it?"

It didn't make any sense. Chakotay cut the connection again and rubbed a hand over the stubble that was just beginning to mark his chin. By last Wednesday she would have been light years away – more than a week into her new command. He paced slightly, trying to work it out. Then Chakotay headed for his contact terminal. Sitting down at the screen, he called Tom Paris.

"Chakotay," said Tom. "Good to see you. How was Baja? Don't tell me – let me guess… hot, sticky, uncomfortable and right up your street, am I right?"

Chakotay tried for a smile. "Something like that. Look, Tom – this might sound like an odd question, but have you spoken to Harry recently? I mean – since I saw you last?"

"The excellent Lieutenant Kim? Sure I have. He's due over later, actually. We've got a local poker game down here he's decided to get in on. In fact, why don't you come and join us? Promise we'll go easy on you…"

"Thanks for the invite, but not tonight," he smiled again, trying to cover the anxiety he thought was probably pretty clear on his face. "I thought Harry had a brand new assignment?"

"Oh, he did," said Tom.

"Then… what happened?"

"Well, it was only ever supposed to be a short hop out to Deep Space One," said Paris. "They were only gone a week – it was the maiden voyage of the _Protean Two_, which explains why Janeway took it out – I guess they figured she knew her way around an Intrepid-class vessel. It's due out again on Friday, apparently. There were a few kinks to iron out."

"I see."

"Why?" Paris asked. "Something wrong?"

Chakotay forced another smile and shook his head. "No, just curious, that's all."

"Sure you won't join us tonight? It could be a great chance to catch up."

"I'll take a rain check, if that's all right."

"Of course it is. All right, I'd better go – I can hear B'Elanna calling for me."

"Give her and Harry my best."

Chakotay severed the connection and stared at the screen again. Kathryn Janeway wasn't light years away after all.

She was here, in San Francisco.

[TBC]


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter Nine**

In Indiana, the late summer was still unfurling, reaching like a desert road into the dusty far horizon. Kathryn Janeway could feel the early evening sun warming her skin where it filtered through the tree's leaves. She twisted around to pull another large apple from its mooring and then noticed that two more had been hiding behind it. She reached for them too, beginning to feel as if there was so much fruit to pick that she'd never be able to harvest them all.

This was her final night in her parents' house. Tomorrow she would take command of the _Promethean Two _again for its second trip, and she had spent the intervening weeks since the ship's maiden voyage tying up loose ends to do with the property. She and Phoebe had agreed that however much they loved the place, it was impractical to keep it. Phoebe and her family couldn't move into it. Kathryn would never be around enough to help with the burden of keeping it going without a permanent resident, and as much as her sister would love to have the time for the upkeep, she simply didn't. It would be best, the sisters had decided, to let it go to another family who could love and care for the place as much as they all had.

It had been painful and yet also cathartic to sort through the remnants of her parents' lives. They had been a happy couple, and even in the wake of her husband's death, Gretchen Janeway had been content and fulfilled, with her own interests and pursuits, her own sense of self. There was a lesson in that, Janeway had thought, as she'd packed up the most sentimental of the items last – the ones that she could neither bear to sell nor give away. A battered old tin cup they had used during camping trips when they were children and which her mother had later re-purposed for her paintbrushes. A glass Christmas bauble much treasured by her mother as a gift from Edward on their third anniversary, so many years ago. A hand-embroidered cushion passed down through the generations, threadbare and faded but still beautiful. The last of her father's books - including the huge and ancient family bible inscribed in the front with the Janeway family tree. As a girl she had watched as her father had written in Kathryn and Phoebe's names, fitting them into the space he had left years before when he'd inked in his own and Gretchen's. Below Phoebe's name Kathryn had recently added the names of her sister's two children.

_Life goes on. _

Kathryn had left the apple tree until last, not only because she knew it was going to be a long job but also because it felt like a fitting place to finish. This would be the last crop they would take from this tree, but the tree itself would remain. Next year another family would be here, and she could only hope that they would also care enough to harvest the fruit. The question was what to do with the multitude of apples. She planned to keep several herself – sentimental, really, but if she could dry the seeds and put them in stasis, perhaps she could grow a sapling herself at some distant point in the future. Some she would ship to Phoebe. The rest would have to go to the neighbours, if Kathryn could find enough spare boxes left over to divide the produce into.

She was so preoccupied in the task that she didn't hear the footsteps until they were very close. Janeway twisted around, teetering precariously on top of the ladder with her arms full of fruit to see who it was.

When Chakotay appeared below her Kathryn was so shocked she couldn't move. They looked at each other for a moment, until Chakotay smiled and indicated the apples in her arms.

"Need a hand?"

"Yes… please. Over there…" Kathryn nodded to the old galvanised bucket laying the grass. Chakotay retrieved it and then planted his foot on the bottom of the ladder so that she could descend it safely. He held up the bucket as Janeway tipped the apples into it.

"Let me take a turn," he said, indicating the tree.

Kathryn hesitated for a moment, on the verge of asking Chakotay what on earth he was doing there, but for some reason the words wouldn't come. So she just moved aside instead, taking hold of the ladder as he climbed it.

They worked quietly as the shadows lengthened, as if it were the most natural thing in the universe that they should end up doing this together, now.

**xXx**

Later, when it had grown too dark to see, they moved to the old bench on the veranda. Kathryn went inside to make coffee, which they would have to share from a single mug – the only one she hadn't packed. She left it to percolate and, taking both a knife and a deep breath, went back outside to where Chakotay sat with his elbows on knees, looking out at the garden. He sat back as she went to one of the overflowing boxes of fruit and chose an apple. Deftly cleaving it in two, she handed half of it to him as she sat down.

"It's only right that we try what we've picked," she said, her voice sounding suddenly loud in her ears after so many hours of easy quiet. "Thank you, Chakotay. Without you I'd never have got them all down."

The dim light filtering through the window behind them illuminated his smile as he took the fruit. "It was the least I could do. Anyway, I'm the one who needs to thank you, Kathryn."

She looked at him questioningly.

"Your father's books… What can I say? Thank you."

Kathryn bit into the apple, its familiar fresh taste conjuring so many fleeting memories of other years, spent eating other apples on this very same bench. "I couldn't think of a better home for them."

"I'll treasure them."

Kathryn smiled. "You could have just sent a message. To thank me, I mean."

"I tried that before. You never answered them."

She dipped her head. It was true. "How did you know I was here, anyway?"

Chakotay leaned back, turning the uneaten apple half in his palm. "I didn't. When you weren't at your apartment I thought you might have shipped out to the _Promethean Two_ early. Without clearance no one at Starfleet would tell me anything. Coming here… I thought it was worth a try."

Janeway didn't really know what to say to that. Even using the transporter hubs Indiana was a long way to come on a chance. She bit into the apple again and chewed a moment before asking, "Why did you?"

He turned to look at her, his dark eyes cast in shadow. Not for the first time, she realised how much she missed seeing his face.

"I thought you'd gone. I heard from Tom Paris that Harry had been assigned to a ship with you as captain, and I thought that meant you were off on another deep space mission somewhere. When I found out you were still on Earth…" He trailed off, as if not even sure himself where he was going. Chakotay shrugged. "I just wanted to see you, that's all."

They let the silence drift for a while. It was strange, Kathryn thought, that despite the tension that seemed to be building just below the surface of their conversation, it felt right that he was here. She felt right in his presence. But then, perhaps that was because this was how they had always existed. Their relationship had, right from the start, involved a constant if fluctuating sense that there was something else unspoken and unexamined, existing just beyond the borderlines of whatever they were actually talking about.

"Chakotay…" she said, with a sigh, just as he broke the silence with, "Kathryn…"

They stopped again, looking at each other.

"Why didn't you stay in touch?" he asked, softly. "You said you would."

"I know. I'm sorry. I wanted to."

"Then why didn't you?"

Kathryn took a deep breath, trying to work out how to frame her next words. "Because out of all the regrets I have about the Delta Quadrant, what I did to you is one of the most potent."

He didn't say anything for a moment. She looked at him and found him watching her intently. "I don't think I know what you mean," he said, eventually.

She shook her head. "I knew how you felt, Chakotay. I always knew. I should have taken a step back – more than a step, a leap. I didn't. I tried, but somehow, I couldn't. I always leaned on you. I always… needed you. And it wasn't fair."

Chakotay was still watching her. "Kathryn, we were in command together. I understood. What I don't understand is, if you feel something for me now, why you're still holding back. That day we had together, with the Ayalas – that was good, wasn't it?"

Kathryn nodded. "Yes, it was."

"Afterwards… There was a moment when I thought-" he trailed off and shrugged his shoulders. "But then nothing."

"I was doing it again."

"Doing what again?"

"I needed you. I," she flushed at the words, but forced herself to say them anyway, "I wanted to be there with you. But it was the same as it was on _Voyager _– it was a heightened situation: the surprise of seeing you, my grief. I never know what's real with us, Chakotay. I can never trust what I'm feeling, because-"

He leaned forward and kissed her into silence. His lips were warm, their fullness moving over hers, and this close she could smell him again, that indefinable scent that had always put a thrill into her heart and did doubly so now, until it was racing as if it would never beat evenly again.

Chakotay gently broke the kiss and sat back, one hand lightly on her arm. He looked at her for a moment, and then his eyes dropped to the half-eaten apple still in her hand. "Funny," he said, quietly. "I always thought you'd taste of coffee."

She laughed. His face broke into a smile and he pulled her forward until their foreheads were resting together.

"I'm not looking for a grand declaration, Kathryn," he said, softly. "I'm not expecting some huge promise."

"But you made one to me," she said, "all those years ago. You sat there and you told me what you felt and what it meant. That was wonderful, Chakotay, but it became terrible, too. How can anything between us ever be anything but all or nothing? How can I do that to you, when I don't know the outcome? When I don't know whether what I'm feeling is just the situation and the fact that you've always, _always _been there for me when I needed you?"

Chakotay leaned back to look at her again, his hand stroking up and down her arm. There was a look of realisation on his face. "God," he muttered. "Mike was right."

Kathryn was confused. "What?"

Chakotay shook his head. "Mike Ayala. He always said my stupid stories would get me into trouble. Kathryn, that was never supposed to be a burden for you. It was meant to be the opposite. And it's been true, hasn't it, and it would continue to be true – I will always be there for you. But now… After eight years – _eight years_ – don't you think we owe it to ourselves to find out what more there might be? No one knows the future. No one can promise forever, certainly not without trying first. That's all I want. To give this a try – to give _us_ a try. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. But surely we've got to find out?"

Kathryn was silent, watching him, still feeling the ghost of his lips against hers. Did she want to try this? Of course she did. Did she actually dare when there were so many questions, so many uncertainties?

"I can't leave Starfleet," she said.

Chakotay frowned. "I would never ask you to."

"I could be away for long periods of time. I could be-"

"How long is this next assignment on the _Promethean Two_?"

"A week."

"Fine. So we'll start there. That's just a short trip. You're going to be away for a week. That's not long. "

"_Voyager _was only supposed to be a short trip," she pointed out.

Chakotay nodded. "True…"

Kathryn sighed. "I don't know, Chakotay…"

Chakotay leaned forward again. "No one does, Kathryn. No one."

They kissed again, lightly, the touch lingering. When it ended, Chakotay leaned back and brushed his fingers along her jaw. "So," he said, quietly. "Dinner? In a week?"

Kathryn smiled and nodded before leaning in to kiss him again. It seemed to come naturally, the urge to press her lips to his. Their kisses grew deeper, more urgent, Chakotay pulling her against him, until something terrible occurred to her.

She broke contact with a slightly breathless gasp. "The coffee! I forgot the coffee."

Chakotay managed to look amused and outraged at the same time. "Seriously?"

Kathryn considered for a moment, and then kissed him again. "It's probably ruined now, anyway."

Chakotay held her lightly by the shoulders, eyebrows raised, eyes alive with laughter. "You don't want to check?"

"No."

"Sure?"

She smiled. "Yes," she said. "I'm sure."

[TBC]


	10. Epilogue

******A/N:** I was going to wait and post this tomorrow but what the hell - here's the conclusion. Thank you so very much to MissyHissy3 for beta reading, plot suggestions, patience, pep-talkery and generally making me laugh a lot. Thanks also to everyone who left a review, I really appreciate them. I hope you find this a satisfying ending.

**Epilogue**

**Later**

The baby was squalling.

"Mike!" Maria called through the open window, "Can you come see to Hannah for me? I'm up to my elbows in veggies!"

Outside, one of the figures standing over the smoky barbecue broke away and walked through the sunshine toward her. Chakotay appeared in the kitchen door a few minutes later.

"Mike's at a critical stage with the chicken," he said, crouching down in front of the baby's high chair and stroking a finger under her wobbling chin. "Will I do?"

Maria shook the water from her hands and reached for a towel. "I doubt it," she said, with a laugh, "unless you've got any better at changing a diaper since Alfie and Thomas were babies!"

Chakotay pulled Hannah from her chair and held her to his chest, but still she murbled unhappily.

"Well, well, well," said Maria, bustling over and taking her daughter from him. "Look at that. Finally a woman who seems to be immune to your charms."

Chakotay smiled. He was looking particularly good today, Maria thought, in dark dress pants and white shirt, open at the collar.

"Where's Kathryn?" she asked, as the baby quieted herself by winding her hands into her mother's hair. "She is coming, isn't she?"

He nodded, something indefinable flashing through his eyes. "She's on her way."

"Everything all right?"

He smiled again, moving to the sink to take the space she had left. "Everything's fine. I'll finish up here while you see to Hannah."

"Wait a minute," Maria said, "why do I get the feeling there's something you're not telling me?" _Please, please, please don't tell me things aren't working out,_ she begged, silently. _It's been going so well for months._

Chakotay laughed a little. "You never change, do you?"

She stepped closer and laid a hand on his back, jigging the baby up and down on her hip. "What is it?"

He turned. "We were going to wait until later."

"Oh?"

Chakotay glanced out of the window, and then said, "I'm shipping out again. Joining a crew."

"What?" Maria said, astonished. "Wait – what kind of crew? Where are you going? Are you re-joining Starfleet?"

"Yes, I'm re-joining Starfleet, although not in a command capacity," he smiled at her. "You don't have to worry, Maria. I'll be safe. I know the captain."

She blinked. "Kathryn?"

Chakotay nodded. "We've been talking about it for a while. A few months ago she was offered permanent command of the _Promethean Two_, to lead an expedition to the Noru sector. Years ago a skeleton team uncovered some interesting geological anomalies there, and the remains of a previously unknown civilization." He shrugged. "They haven't been able to go back until now because the sector is peppered with volatile spatial anomalies, but the _Promethean Two_'s ablative plating should neutralize their effects. They need an archaeologist to head up the historical team and it doesn't hurt that I also have experience of taking an _Intrepid_-class ship into unknown territory."

"So you're going with her."

Chakotay smiled. "Yes. I am."

"How long is the mission?"

"Two years, minimum."

"Well," she said. "I guess that means the two of you are both in it for the long-term, then?"

He laughed. "Yes, I guess it does."

The baby cooed into her ear as Maria looked at him thoughtfully. Chakotay raised his eyebrows.

"What?"

Maria shook her head. "Starfleet are OK with it? You two being in a relationship? I mean, won't you have to have separate quarters for the whole trip? I thought they frowned on unmarried couples sharing?"

"They're not particularly keen on it."

"So…" Maria prompted, feeling suddenly hopeful. "Does this mean we can expect an announcement sometime soon? That Kathryn might finally make an honest man of you?"

Chakotay sighed, though it was through a smile. He leaned against the sink, and looked as if he were debating something. "Actually," he said, eventually, "she already has. We got Admiral Paris to officiate this morning."

Maria felt her jaw drop open.

"We wanted to do it quietly, no fanfare," Chakotay explained. "You know what the press would have been like, otherwise."

"You're… _married_?"

He smiled, glancing at the timepiece on the window ledge. "Yes. For all of… three hours and 57 minutes."

Kathryn chose that moment to appear through the garden gate. She was wearing a sleeveless, ankle-length cream-coloured dress, pretty but not overstated. There was a white flower in her hair. It was a smarter look than usual for their Sunday afternoon gatherings, but not by much. In her hands she held a plate, on which seemed to be something that may or may not have been a large but slightly lopsided chocolate cake. Maria felt her eyes fill with tears.

"Hold Hannah," she ordered Chakotay, thrusting the baby into his arms. A moment later she was rushing towards Kathryn, her arms outstretched.

**xXx**

Chakotay watched the pandemonium through the window, laughing to see Kathryn suddenly enveloped in a typical Maria-style embrace. Mike Ayala turned to see what the fuss was and rescued the cake. He appeared in the kitchen a moment later, a grin on his face as he put the laden plate on the counter.

"Is that about what I think it might be?"

Chakotay smiled. "My wife will kill me. We were supposed to tell you together, later."

Mike laughed and grabbed him in a bear hug, squashing his protesting daughter between them. "Took long enough."

"Yeah, well. Some things are worth waiting for."

They stood side by side, watching the two women talking and laughing in the sunlight.

"Not much of a setting for a wedding reception," Ayala observed.

Chakotay smiled. "I wouldn't have it any other way, and neither would Kathryn."

Mike chuckled and shook his head. "_Kathryn._ I remember when I first heard you call her that."

"Half dome?"

Ayala looked at him. "That's right."

They stood in companionable silence for a moment, their thoughts drifting over memories formed thousands of light years away.

"Is that supposed to be a Jibelian fudge cake?" Mike asked, nodding at the chocolate monstrosity that seemed to be leaning further and further to the left by the minute.

"Yes. Neelix sent Kathryn the recipe ages ago. It's possible that this one might actually be edible…"

Mike suddenly slapped his thigh and then started rooting through his pockets.

"What's the matter?"

"How many of the old _Voyager _crew do you think are still around?"

Chakotay frowned. "What, on Earth? Quite a few. Tom and B'Elanna for certain, Harry's still here at the moment because he'll be shipping out with us, I happen to know that Tuvok's visiting… Seven's still deep in research with the Doctor at the Academy… Plenty of others, too. Why?"

Mike finally located his communicator. "If this doesn't call for a reunion, I don't know what does. Let's turn this into a proper party. We'll never eat all that cake ourselves."

**xXx**

Later – much later – Chakotay untangled the rose from Kathryn's hair. They had walked slowly back to his apartment, and now they were lying in bed, she sprawled across him, her chin resting on his chest. The room around them was full of boxes, half-packed as they readied for the next move, the usual storm of chaos that preceded a long-term assignment.

He stroked back her hair. "Happy?"

"Very. You?"

Chakotay smiled. "I can't remember being happier."

"Long may it last." Kathryn kissed him, still tasting of chocolate. She drank less coffee these days. He liked to think that whatever need it had served was now being served by something else.

He wrapped his arms around her and flipped them over, and she laughed as he kissed her neck.

"I made you a promise this morning," she said, suddenly. "Did you notice?"

"Funnily enough, I did."

Kathryn pushed him away far enough to look into his face. Her own was serious. "How did I ever doubt that it would be the right thing to do? Why did it take me so long?"

He smiled. "It doesn't matter. All that matters now is the future."

She tapped him on the chest, arching an eyebrow. "Not sure a commanding officer wants to hear that from her new archaeological attaché…"

Chakotay shook his head affectionately. "You know what I mean."

Kathryn smiled. "I do. Onwards?"

He kissed her, loving it. Loving _her_. "Onwards."

[END]


End file.
